Starting on Monday 6th July, I began my four-day work experience placement at Pennine Healthcare. While most of my time was spent working with Dan and the Marketing Team, I also had the opportunity to meet and learn from several other departments, including the International Sales Team, Customer Service and UK Sales Team, and the Theatre Packs Team. Although I have been here for less than a week, I can say that everyone has made me feel incredibly welcome. I have particularly appreciated the time employees have taken out of their day to explain their roles and give me an insight into the different areas of the business.
As my work experience placement was with Dan, the Strategy, Marketing & Communications Director, most of my time was spent completing marketing tasks provided in a booklet, which Beth and Kieran advised me on improving and completing my work. Both gave me an insight into their day-to-day roles and showed me that, although they work in the same team, they have different responsibilities and ways of working. An example of this would be how Beth uses Adobe for her graphic designs and Kieran uses Canva for his designs which is much simpler. I preferred using Canva when creating my blog asset.
One of the tasks I enjoyed most when working with the marketing team was SEO research. I was given the login to SEMrush, where I looked for words that could be used in Pennine’s website in an attempt to boost its Google rankings for that search. I was looking for keywords with a small search volume as it will be easier for Pennine to rank for. I managed to find some to do with catheters and then wrote a summary on why I chose these words, and the team seemed happy with my analysis and reasoning.
Following on from this, I wrote a blog post about catheters. I am now much more knowledgeable on catheters than before, and I personally think these tasks I have done gave me much more knowledge on how a website is setup and the processes used in creating the pages for it. Additionally, it has widened my skill set for the future, and I will be confidently able to talk about what I have learnt in interviews when I start to apply for jobs.
I also managed to spend time with the team responsible for packing products into individual packs and Dionne, who registers the custom packs to be created using her laptop. In the clean room, where the packs get made, I was shown how the process works with the products arriving from the warehouse in bags which then have to be separated individually for each pack. When I went in, they were getting 180 of the same pack ready for an order, so they had to go through the process of collecting the same quantity of each product 180 times. For this specific order, an IFU was needed due to certain regulations, meaning that documentation was needed for each pack, consisting of 35 pages from one document, 3 from another, 5 from a third, and 1 page each from two additional documents.
I helped with this and discovered that this is a very lengthy process and the lady I was working with was very glad that IFUs aren’t often needed otherwise the production process would take significantly longer. I also attempted to wrap up the packs, which I could not do at all as I found it too confusing, so I left it to the expert to do.
While working with Dionne, Pennine had recently received an order from a company looking for multiple custom packs to be made, so Dionne had to go through the process of filling out an Excel sheet with the product number and description so that the production team could manufacture the products and prepare them for packing. This had to be done for every product in every pack, then after this, a new pack had to be created on the system by adding each product and then saving it. Dionne allowed me to do this, which I enjoyed.
During my 4-day period at Pennine, I was lucky enough to spend a few hours with both the International Sales Team and the UK Sales & Customer Service Team who talked me through the order processing stages from the first email enquiry to the final invoice being sent. One thing I noticed was the importance of clear communication, as every email and interaction with customers contributed to ensuring orders were processed correctly and that there were no setbacks during the process.
Whilst both International and UK Sales Teams deal with sales, there are some major differences with one being rules and regulations overseas. One example that I already mentioned was when an IFUs was needed due to certain regulations meaning when an order comes through internationally, there may be more to consider, ensuring that no international laws are broken. A major thing I learnt from these departments was that the role of sales involves much more than simply receiving orders, as the team needs to understand customer requirements, ensure the correct information is recorded, and communicate with other departments to allow the order to progress.
I managed to meet the accounts team at Pennine and spent about an hour with Gav, the Commercial Analyst who is responsible for the business’s forecasting reports, and his role gave me an insight into how a business interprets demand and determines how much supply should be bought. He showed me how to estimate future sales. The conversation I had with Gav interested me highly as his job seems challenging but also very fascinating as Pennine rely on him to not over or under supply products and keep.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Pennine. My understanding of how a business operates internally has completely changed, as I was able to gain an insight into how different departments at Pennine work. Although I did not get the opportunity to see every department, the experience gave me a much better understanding of the internal processes involved in running a business.
Everyone I met from the receptionist who greeted me on my first day to the rest of the employees across the whole site were exceptionally welcoming and unbothered about taking some time out of their day to show me around the business.
The work culture at Pennine is one of the main things that stood out to me as one of the rules for the office is Dress for the Day, being that unless there are any external meetings held, employees can wear more casual clothing when they work, which I believe contributed to the relaxed atmosphere I experienced in the office.
Everyone also worked well together, which I believe is important to the business as it helps maintain a positive atmosphere and keeps employees focused on their work. I am more than thankful to everyone who I have met and spoken to at Pennine, especially Dan, Kieran and Beth from the marketing team.
I would like to thank everyone I worked with for making my placement such an enjoyable and valuable experience. The time they took to explain their roles and help me understand the business made my four days at Pennine something I will remember and take forward into the future.
